Glen A. Larson, creator of numerous shows including Knight Rider and the original Battlestar Galactica, has passed away. The LA Times is reporting that Larson died due to complications from esophageal cancer. Our condolences to his family.

Disruption of our modes of production is hardly an "existential threat." It's high time we disentangle income from productivity anyway.

In an ideal world, AI's and robots would run all of the manual labor, and no one would have to work, in the traditional sense. The problem is getting there: it would be completely disruptive to our economy, as we know it, and things like housing, food, and medical care would basically have to be provided for free. We…

Does the IHS still run out of money half-way through the year? I remember as a kid (non-reservation, using our local IHS clinic) if you needed glasses, you better get your appointment before April or you'd have to wait for the program to be re-funded for the next year. It's so under-funded that people can't get…

I'm more concerned that I have to be literally near death to be referred to a specialist. There are countless people on my Rez with chronic medical problems that require a specialist but we are under a life or limb policy. So basically these people need to wait until the condition worsens and becomes life threatening.…

Try to give all your characters importance and make them all interesting and unique. Obviously that's easier said then done, but if you make more characters that people can care about and give them all a degree of prominence once in awhile, you'll be able to have more good stories. And then if you ever have to remove…

Mistake the X-Files made was not letting go of Gillian Anderson when Duchovny left, so that Dogget and Reyes could be their own team instead of one of them always taking a back seat as it seemed. I would much rather they wrote out Scully and let the other two have a go and if it failed, fine, but it wouldn't have drug…

I think it depends if the world you set up in your first few stories clearly only exists to serve the needs of the characters introduced in those stories, or if it is strong enough in its own right that you can have multiple stories/characters set within it to create a franchise.

World building plus tone. Perfect example is Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's an amazing world, and even after Aang beat the Firelord and ended that story, they set it up so the world could be revisited without a problem. The idea that the Avatar is reincarnated through each generation is kind of the animated…

Good box office returns.

Not sci-fi or fantasy by any means, but Mark from Peep Show just can't keep from fucking up constantly.

In the comic-con poster, the vision is in the background. This gives me hope that he will be there. I wouldn't be surprised to see War Machine, or The Falcon in this movie as well.

First trailers are usually more of a long teaser and need to make the most impact for as many people as possible. Avengers 2 is a big deal so it needed to come out swinging with loud noises and OMG imagery since it's the first look anybody will get.

Everyone thinks distrust of the government came with events of their generation. People who lived while FDR was President saw isolationist groups harassed and silenced by government agents. Under Woodrow Wilson as we entered WWI, critics of the war were jailed and sauerkraut was renamed "liberty cabbage". None of this…

Ed's song did play on the ending credits to Desolation of Smaug, I See Fire.

Except the policymakers we would think of as being behind that revolution were already versed in those theories because of those essays. The founder's speeches reflected those works often at the same level of complexity. You're ignoring that.

Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire are all great—but they are theorists, not orators. We are discussing the language the public speaking, not political theories. I would never put Paine on the same footing as a theorist as any of the greats. That's not the point.

You hit the nail on the head. The trend towards the democratization of presidential speech is fantastic on a philosophical level, but it's been nothing short of disastrous for both the voting public as well the politicians.

This guy: John Crichton from Farscape.

but you know what? It's his thing. I feel like this has to be bittersweet for him.